[BLOG] Some Monday links

• D-Brief notes that, with the Dawn probe unresponsive, its mission to Vesta and Ceres is now over.


• The Dragon's Tales reports that NASA is seeking commercial partners to deliver cargo to the proposed Gateway station.


• JSTOR Daily looks back to a time where chestnuts were a staple food in Appalachia.


• Language Log takes a look at prehistoric words in Eurasia for honey, in Indo-European and Old Sinitic.


• Joy Katz at the LRB Blog writes about her lived experience of the conventional Pittsburgh neighbourhood of Squirrel Hill, a perhaps unlikely scene of tragedy.


• The Map Room Blog links to an interactive map showing the Québec election results.


• Marginal Revolution links to that New York Magazine article about young people who do not vote to start a discussion.


• Roads and Kingdoms looks at the real dangers faced by Venezuelan refugees in the northern Brazilian state of Roraima, at the start of the era of Bolsonaro.


• Window on Eurasia argues that changes to the Russian census allowing people to identify with multiple ethnicities could lead to a sharp shrinking in the numbers of minority nationalities.

[URBAN NOTE] Five Toronto links: #650Parliament, Leslieville, Bathurst, Sheppard, Scarborough

• That the owners of 650 Parliament Street are charging displaced tenants rent, while they are away from their homes, is unconscionable. The Toronto Star reports.


• This CBC Toronto story about light pollution leaking over from a commercial building in Leslieville to nearby condos highlights a new problem for mixed-use districts.


• Urban Toronto takes a look at the latest version of a proposal for a mixed-used property at Lake Shore and Bathurst.


• blogTO notes that at least some politicians want to extend the underused Sheppard line of the TTC east to Kennedy station.


• Aparita Bhandavi at The Discourse notes how the recent elections confirmed the underrepresentation of non-white males in politics in Scarborough.

[URBAN NOTE] Five city links: Churchill, Calgary, New York City, Beirut, Jaywick Sands

• Repair to the railroad that provided the only land connection of Churchill, Manitoba, to the rest of Canada has finally been repaired, and the first train in a year has come in. CBC reports.


• Jason Markusoff at MacLean's notes that city council in Calgary salvaged the city's 2026 Olympics bid, for now.


• CityLab notes an experiment with commercial rent control in New York City, in an effort to prevent the collapse of the small and independent retail sector.


• As the trash disposal crisis in Beirut continues, CityLab notes that poor children in the Lebanese capital are trying to scavenge from the city's waste.


• The SCMP notes the unhappiness of the people of the English village of Haywick Sands that an old image of their community was used in an American attack ad.

[NEWS] Five science links: oceans, global warming, stars, Milky Way Galaxy, Sagittarius A*

• CBC notes that a cold-water reef off of Cape Breton ravaged by fishing is showing signs of recovery.


• Motherboard reports a study suggesting that the oceans have absorbed much more heat than previously thought, suggesting the margins to avoid climate change are thinner than imagined.


• Paul M. Sutter at Universe Today notes how scarily large and massive blue giant stars can unlock key mysteries about stellar evolution.


• Motherboard notes the latest, strong evidence for Sagittarius A* at the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy actually being a black hole.


• Phys.org notes a new study suggesting that the inner core of the Milky Way Galaxy was formed by an ancient collision with a dwarf galaxy 10 billion years ago.

[PHOTO] Five photography links: Flickr, Kodak vs Fujifilm, landscapes, macro, future

• Peter Bright at Ars Technica notes the potential negative import of the decision of Flickr to limit free accounts to one thousand photos. What will happen to those accounts like my own which exceed that limit? I'll be making hard decisions this month.


• This Petapixel essay takes a look at why front-running film firm Kodak failed to adapt to the digital era while runner-up Fujifilm survived.


• This ScienceDaily article notes, via the choice of photos uploaded to online photo accounts, the importance of landscapes in the human imagination.


• At Speed River Journal, Van Waffle talks about the benefits of macrophotography, of extreme close-ups, and of curiosity about the workings of the world.


• This Sean O'Hagan article at The Guardian taking a look at the mutations of photography in the Instagram era, who artists are interrogating the technology and the social conventions of the genre, is fascinating.

[PHOTO] Blue and gold, Church and Maitland

[WRITING] Five writing links: lone genius, imaginary societies, Truman Capote, poetry, NaNoWriMo

• Back in July, Cody Delistraty wrote about the myth of the "lone genius". Creators always create in some sort of community.


• Patricia Wrede writes about the challenges involved in creating an imaginary society for a fiction setting.


• JSTOR Daily notes how the choices of Truman Capote played a critical role in advancing the "New Journalism".


• This article at The Atlantic takes a look at how poetry has enjoyed a remarkable revival, commercially at least, through the online accounts of writers like Rupi Kaur.


• Beth Skwarecki at Lifehacker shares tips for writers interested in producing a manuscript during this year's NaNoWriMo. (I am just blindly going ahead, myself. Wish me luck!)